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General Sessions

NACS Show General Sessions spotlight dynamic speakers with game-changing ideas to help you navigate and compete in today’s disruptive and fast-moving marketplace.

Bonin BoughOctober 7, 2018
3:45 to 5:00 pm

Bonin Bough is one of the foremost-awarded marketing executives in his field, the host of “The Cleveland Hustles” and the author of Txt Me (646) 759-1837. Throughout his career, Bonin has spearheaded some of the industry’s largest global marketing campaigns across digital, mobile, television, print and experiential platforms, including the premier of the first-ever 3D-printed food product: the customizable, real-time, 3D-printed Oreo at SXSW.

As the chief media and ecommerce officer at Mondelēz International (formerly Kraft Foods), he created some of the first marketing programs across Facebook, Twitter and Paramount Films—to name a few—and fostered partnerships with startups including Instagram, Foursquare and Buzzfeed. Bonin’s prominence as a transformative activator has helped reinvigorate traditional marketing by combining innovative technology via breakthrough brand campaigns.

Scott StrattenOctober 8, 201810:30 – 11:45 am

As the ultimate sales and marketing truth-slayer, Scott Stratten, president of Unmarketing, helps organizations see their business through a new lens with his unconventional “unmarketing” views and vanguard approach to building and maintaining real customer relationships. He has transformed how corporations such as PepsiCo, Century 21, Fidelity and Microsoft do business with radical insights on how to engage better with customers through social and viral marketing.

Named a top-five social media influencer by Forbes, Stratten elevates the conversation by putting the focus back on what matters most to current and potential buyers: values such as trust, authenticity, relationships and service.

Ideas 2 GoOctober 9, 201810:30am to 11:45 am
With Ideas 2 Go, retailers from around the country, invite us into their store and provide a video tour of their best ideas—whether quick ideas you can implement tomorrow or ideas to consider in your next strategic planning sessions.

Mike RoweOctober 10, 20188:00 am to 9:00 am

From the Baltimore Opera to QVC shopping channel, executive producer and TV host Mike Rowe has had hundreds of jobs and relished his role as a chronic freelancer. He’s best known as the “dirtiest man on TV,” a title he earned on the hit series “Dirty Jobs,” in which he traversed all 50 states, completed 300 different jobs and transformed cable television into a landscape of swamps, sewers and coal mines.

Most recently, you can find Rowe on Facebook’s groundbreaking series “Returning the Favor,” where he searches for remarkable people making a difference in their communities and helps give back to those who pay it forward with humor, heart and surprise. In addition, he launched “The Way I Heard It,” a weekly five-minute podcast of short mysteries designed for curious minds with short attention spans.

Rowe also runs the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity that works hard to debunk myths about the skilled trades and help close the skills gap. As the CEO of the foundation, he speaks regularly about the country’s dysfunctional relationship with work and challenges the persistent belief that a four-year degree is automatically the best path for the most people. To achieve its mission, the foundation provides financial support to people getting trained for skilled jobs that are in demand through a variety of scholarship programs, including the Work Ethic Scholarship Program. Since its inception, the foundation has granted, or helped facilitate the granting of, more than $5 million in technical and vocational education for trade schools across the country.